Mujyaki ni waratte
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Instead of leaving for a business trip, Tohma is delayed when he hears Suguru’s new piece...


**fandom - Gravitation  
title – Mujyaki ni waratte.  
pairing - Tohma Suguru  
rating – pg-13  
description – Instead of leaving for a business trip, Tohma is delayed when he hears Suguru's new piece…**

**Disclaimer – Gravitation doesn't belong to me.**

**Mujyaki ni waratte. (Smiling innocently.)**

**By miyamoto yui**

On his way out, the man with the almost transparent blond hair stopped in front of the mirror on the back of the door. He pulled on the crooked knob to fix his blue, thin purple-striped tie. Nodding in approval to his reflection, his solemn lips and half-stinging gaze remained unchanged.

Picking up his briefcase, he pulled on his white sleeve to reveal his golden Saiko watch. Then, he pulled his sleeve back over his thin, pale wrist.

"Just enough time," he mumbled to himself as if confirming it to someone else.

Locking his office, he went down the hall and down the elevator. He stared up at the numbers as they descended quickly, faster than if he counted in seconds. But as "1" was about to show up, he opened the security box and flashed his card.

_Beep._ An electronic voice announced through the emergency speaker, "Seguchi Tohma." Then, he pushed the elevator button for "B3".

_Kssh-cling._

With the sudden flick of his wrist, the clasp of his watch unclasped and it hung down over half of his hand. Slipping it back into place, he took an elongated breath of air.

_Ping!_ The silhouette of his fuzzy, jagged figure on the steel doors parted.

This was the only fully carpeted part of NG Productions and it was the only floor that seemed warmer and more comfortable than the rest of the tall skyscraper. Hidden underground, it was the blond man's secret vacation spot. What better way to hide than in the building that you built yourself?

Faintly, and almost in a dream, a lullaby played. Slowly. Muted.

The man followed the lullaby that sounded like crystals touching one another. He walked up to the familiar sliding glass doors. Carefully, he pushed one door with his fingers tightening almost air-tight onto the glass and left his briefcase outside.

Tilting his head to one side, a smile spilled out. He was watching the rolled up crinkled yellow sleeves and chest that rose with pained breath and fell carefully, as if holding breaths to their longest, fullest extent.

With only half of the face showing, the blond could see how those eyes fought with the music and the pianist's own feelings: Can you show it all? Should you show all of yourself so easily?

Those very transparently clear eyes.

Tohma clapped his hands only twice. "So, you can make those kinds of songs too?"

_Ti-ting!_

Startled, the boy with the green highlights immediately stopped playing on the grand piano. But it wasn't fair to call him a boy because he was already 23, except his face still had some of its baby fat and his eyes were wide and large, an easy deception to his ever-watchful and eloquent manner.

It didn't help that he quickly pulled his hands back into fists onto his thighs. The contrast with the black pants made his knuckles look even whiter. The man looked at those fists and chuckled a bit at the small yet open gesture.

_Shh shh._ A music sheet fell to the ground. The boy got up from his temporarily mortified state and picked up the thin piece of paper from the floor.

_**If it were me, I would have pretended that I was just closing the music book and look at the person who came in. Yet, to be on guard all the time is so troublesome too. It is time-consuming.**_

_**I wish I could react extremely like that sometimes, but then I would hate myself for showing something obvious like that.**_

_**Vulnerable: It is a human trait. It is something I'm not allowed to assert, not even when I'm by myself. Is this dishonesty if you wish to remain calm at all times?**_

_**But does it necessarily mean 'honesty' if you say everything?**_

When the boy tapped the ends of the music sheets on the sleek piano into a neat stack, he looked over at Tohma.

Still standing, the boy turned his head towards Tohma to smile coolly, yet with a tinge of sleepiness. "Sorry, I was just surprised. Usually, no one knows I am here."

"I know everything that goes on in my building. So, I know you've been here everyday this week and going home between midnight and dawn. You should just use my bed instead of the floor if you need to rest."

"You wouldn't understand how nice it feels to sleep on the soft carpet when your body is so tired and loves the piano too much to leave." Trying to make light of the situation, the boy added, "But I did take your red blanket to make myself more comfortable."

"Typical."

Tohma lifted up his sleeve smoothly to glance at the time. This room purposely had no clock in it. "I won't tell you to stop, Suguru. It's not proper to tell someone to do something that they themselves do not do."

Putting the papers onto the piano bench, Suguru didn't look into Tohma's face as he said, "Doesn't it get tiring if you live so cautiously?"

Tohma's eyes immediately focused on the fake window in front of him. It was a whole wall with clear water. Small schools of fish and certain red coral lived there. It was supposed to look like the middle of the ocean, not quite dark and yet not with too much light.

His feelings, though no one could tell, and he wasn't sure if Suguru guessed the hint of it, was that he always felt like he was swimming. Water was the only other place, besides music, that he felt 'alive'.

'It must have been silent to live there', he once thought.

Then, after the three seconds he took his attention off Suguru, holding his arms, Tohma gracefully turned around and leaned forward to look straight at Suguru and poked him on the forehead with a calm, yet slightly surprised expression. "You've been around Shindou-kun for too long, haven't you?"

At the mention of this name and at the poke, Suguru immediately pouted and puffed up his chest indignantly.

Tohma cleared his throat as he hid a smirk that he could clearly feel appearing on his lips.

"Usually, you play such demanding, hard pieces and with the extra difficulty of using synthesizers. Why the piano today?" It made Tohma mercilessly curious. This soft sound was something Suguru didn't ever want to do anything with when he was a child. He always said it was for the weak, that it was too easy to master.

_**Now, he was closing the piano cover at my entrance? Wasn't it only natural that when you grew older that you wanted to try everything that you could possibly do with something you truly were in love with?**_

Knowing the answer already but wanting to hear it from Suguru's fingers, Tohma resigned to that same longing that he denied himself to.

And Suguru easily dreaded the question that was sure to follow, as was Tohma's style whenever it was just the two of them together…

"Will you play that melody again for me?"

Suguru took the papers from the bench and sat down. Looking at the wispy papers, he made no answer. He pointed his head upward, focusing on the painting on the ceiling. It was the one he always stared at before he took a short nap on the gentle, white carpet.

The stretched out, rectangular painting was of a long-haired angel whose face was half- covered. It was crouching on the ground in pain. The wings were partly-open but with red spots to show that they were bleeding.

The confusing part was that the eyes were smiling and the mouth was open to look like the excruciating hurt helped it to sing even more gorgeously.

What was it singing now?

Like a book that jaggedly cut through the human soul, the angel sang different things to each of them at different times of their lives.

Suguru eyes wandered in strained determination towards the piano strings. Finally, he opened his mouth, joking, "You're going to make fun of me. Especially after that rant I made about slow piano songs. I know you remember the oddest things about me."

The strings seemed to come out invisibly to strangle him. He couldn't keep this song to himself after all. It was a song meant to be heard. Lining up the papers in order, he quietly gulped within himself.

A bubble remained in his throat blocking all his words.

_Shift shift._

_Crinklecrinklecrinkle._

But from the tone of his playful voice, Tohma could tell that that wasn't the reason at all.

_**You had learned too well from me. **_

_**Whenever you're like this, I can't help but watch the details of the train-passing seconds of my life go by in slow-motion inside of my mind.**_

"Sit by me and just listen since I know I have no choice when it's an order from the company president." Suguru opened the piano cover and put his hands over his knees.

At this last remark, Tohma's eyes faced the ground though he smiled placidly.

Suguru tried his best to give him a reassuring smile, but he only found Tohma become absolutely quiet. Alarmed, he immediately apologized, "I didn't mean it that way."

"Of course you didn't."

Looking at the papers again, he finally lifted up his fingers over the white and black keys. He said to Tohma gently, "Please listen to it as if you never knew me."

Suguru's long, slender fingers opened to full-length and his hands almost touched palm to palm. They spread like mermaid's fins over the expanse of keys and Tohma slowly took in his breath, never leaving his eyes from the fingertips that slowly began touching the piano ever so softly: A lover lightly caressing his loved one.

Was it possible to feel jealousy over a non-living object?

At this, Tohma couldn't help but feel moved, almost feeling the blush come onto his normally (which this occasion surprised him that it slightly dropped to 'almost always') unflustered face. Despite all discretion, those fingers beckoned to him and so he sat down next to Suguru and folded his hands over his lap.

The boy was there and yet he did not look at that man at all. He took in a breath and let it go as if pushing his stomach to sing a song with unwritten lyrics. Pushing and pushing, Suguru felt his heart race and contract in agony, in contrast to the slow tune that unraveled him piece by piece, beautiful beat followed by even more beautiful beat.

He knew it was it his best performance yet, but he felt like crying and his chest got tighter and tighter, wanting to lock up all his confusion, passion, and suffering inside again.

_**Why was it that the best things you created were the ones that sounded the most simple from the outside?**_

Tohma imagined a shadow of himself walking out the door and into the limousine that would have taken him to Tokyo station in order to make the meeting he had the next morning. And yet, selfishness took over the need for responsibility. He was so entranced and content to just stay as he was, to listen to that haunting melody that was so scared yet forceful.

_**That pained face made a song that could move me.**_

_**I am afraid to touch it, and break it.**_

Suguru closed his eyes and then opened them again. His eyelashes touched one another and then they were separated again. His right eye shifted from side to side, watching the keys so clearly, without hesitation.

_**What happened to that little boy that used to violently use the piano to vent out his silent self-hatred? How did you turn into this breath-taking person?**_

Without being aware of it, Tohma's eyes wandered from the fingers, up the arms to the shoulders, and into Suguru's profile. He just stared at the boy's face as he sang this melody with his all of his body to the audience of one.

_**I am sorry I couldn't listen to this song as if I never knew you.**_

Each note was like a lyric that wanted to be shouted out from deep inside the heart and the clashing of the soul: The calmness of the sea always knowing that the fury of a storm was to come, never becoming truly tranquil. Shifting from moment to moment, the waves back and forth, repeating the same question in the refrain with different answers in each stanza.

When he felt it was ending, Tohma's eyebrows were almost touching one another. Never saying anything aloud, his eyes always spoke for themselves.

Suguru's eyes looked straight at him for a second, knowing that Tohma's breath had stopped. With a solemn face, he nodded to confirm that he had to stop.

_**You're always like a child, wanting more from me whenever you give me those pleading eyes.**_

_**But if I don't stop-**_

_**I might sell my soul willingly.**_

_**There are some things in this world you shouldn't open though you want to. **_

Softly as it had come, the song finally ended.

Finally, finished fighting with the song and himself, Suguru took a deep breath while Tohma turned his eyes away to look up at the painting above them and held his hands even tighter over one another.

The only thing that Tohma said was, "You played well."

Suguru's eyes beamed. He smiled so widely, you would have thought he didn't know anything about the pressures, tortures, and mini mental suicides that happened in daily life. He turned to his right side to look at Tohma proudly. "Thanks."

His teeth showed and his dimples became even deeper the more his grin stretched.

_**Just like when we were younger, because of my pride, I couldn't lean over to ask for help. But here was Suguru leaning his head on my shoulder and holding the papers to the song to revise it. I continued to look up at the painting.**_

_**For a little while, I pretended that there was nothing else to worry about in the world. You continued to correct the arrangement, sometimes staring off at the keys.**_

_**You felt so warm against my cold shoulder.**_

_**Your face during the song stood out in my mind: I had never seen you like you were about to cry though your face had no tears and you were so serious.**_

"_**I wish I was of more help to you," you whispered to me. I felt your warm breaths of air on the tips of my jacket.**_

_**I didn't want to answer.**_

_**Maybe because you're used to me, you can read me so well. But I've never let another human being see how I act with you when we're alone or else they'll find out my treasure: The one thing in this world that I didn't want to possess because if I did, you would change. The one thing in this world that knew everything about me with a single look but didn't know anything at all that you did.**_

_**The one person in the world that I wanted to become knowledgeable about this world, yet be left unstained by the malicious effects of it. To be strong enough to overcome it and remain the same as you always were.**_

_**Because if you changed, I wouldn't have a home if I couldn't find you.**_

When Tohma was in a speeding car towards that very important appointment, he raised up the dark divider and wept quietly, holding the tearducts of his closed eyes with his index finger and thumb. The driver thought he was pressing his nose because of a headache from lack of sleep.

Tohma, of course, didn't sob or let out any kind of distress through his lips. He appeared to have had a big headache, but from the bottom of his heart, he cried for the first time when he became an adult.

_**Ryuichi had always kept me at bay.**_

_**He always knew how to catch me back into childhood. But you always reminded me of what it felt like, pulling back into the ocean that I loved so much. You always reminded me that independence wasn't freedom at all. It meant responsibility: To pursue happiness without restraint.**_

_**And as I had a long long drive with the dawn catching up with me, I looked at the old phone that I just couldn't replace with a newer model. I held the smooth, light red metal in my hand and looked at it so fondly. Flipping up the cover with my thumb, I opened up to see the faded photograph as my wallpaper.**_

When he arrived, Ryuichi was on the stage sleeping with Kumagorou. He eyed Tohma harshly, accusingly. Kumagorou was still sleeping on its side when Ryuichi got up to stomp towards his fellow band member. Pulling his fist up, Ryuichi ended up grabbing the back of Tohma's neck to pull him closely to whisper so that none of the staff could hear while they were arranging the equipment. "I don't mind you at all, you know how I am, being late to a practice you yourself arranged, but I don't like lying to Mika-san, saying that you were still sleeping."

Ryuichi looked at Tohma with a sigh, knowing that if Tohma turned off the vibration and the ringer to his phone, it could mean only one thing.

_Ache._

Without even trying to rephrase his words into something less incriminating, Tohma honestly said, "I wanted to hear his new song and I couldn't bring myself to leave."

It was then that Ryuichi's eyes opened widely to look closer at Tohma. In the next blink, he stepped back understandingly. His expression softened to the lighthearted one he always had on, the unreadable one that really made you go off-guard.

"You won't ever be happy if you aren't a little selfish, Tohma. By not letting others know what you want, they'll never know. You only learn how to read them and not let them read you. Don't you only hurt yourself that way?"

_Peck._ Tilting his head, Ryuichi gave Tohma a quick kiss on the cheek.

The genius vocalist of Nittle Grasper gave a victory sign, proud of Tohma and more thankful to Suguru, the only person who could really reach that part of Tohma that was so well-guarded, even he as his best friend could do nothing about.

_PUSH._ Ryuichi pushed Tohma's shoulders to go to his room to wait for Nuriko, who was on her way by Shinkansen after her daughter left for school. Tohma nodded tiredly.

When he walked away, Ryuichi looked after him. Behind the curtain and away from everyone's gaze, he frowned. It was still sad though, to love someone like that.

He knew this feeling all too well. He re-lived it secretly in every song he sang on stage, from the past and well into the blurry future.

Sitting on the chair, Tohma closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

/"Here."

"What's this? Umeboshi?" Tohma lightly joked as he looked at the envelope being pushed into his hand.

"No. It's chocolate."

Silence.

As if it was an afterthought, Suguru held his binder and books in one arm and blocked his yawn with the other, greeting, "Happy Valentine's Day."

Tohma, looking deeply into his eyes as he held his briefcase in front of the glass doorway, answered seriously, "You're late."

"I'm sorry. I was working all day that day."

But Suguru didn't get the jest and took his eyes as the more honest answer. Hurt, his eyes became downcast and walked down the hallway.

Tohma's eyes opened apologetically, but Suguru was already inside the elevator. The doors closed and Suguru didn't pay attention to him at all.

It was at that moment that he saw the pieces of paper inside the folder. It was the polished version of the song he'd just played.

_**Where'd you-**_

_**You mean you already finished it?**_

For the first time in his life, Tohma had not thought far enough./

_**Only with you.**_

_Blink, blink._

The phone lit up.

Tohma flipped up the rectangular-shaped, dark metallic red DoKoMi phone that Suguru bought for him when he first opened NG Productions.

Suguru left a text message that said:

_//Don't worry too much about what happened before you left. Sorry that I'm no good at taking jokes. I was just embarrassed because you rarely compliment me and then you said 'You're late'._

_Thank you._

_Good luck with the concert.//_

He couldn't help but feel that Suguru had planned it all from the beginning, but he wouldn't allow himself to believe it.

His thumb pressed for the screen to show the old photo that always greeted him whenever he opened the phone.

_**I have all the photographs you've ever taken. From anywhere. From everywhere...**_

_**From anyone.**_

_**But this is my favorite: **_

_**Your chubby hands reached out to me when you were only one year old with that wide smile. Your mother told me, "He never smiles, but whenever he sees you, his lips start to curl up." Looking at Suguru with a proud grin, my aunt said, "You really like Tohma, don't you?"**_

_**It was at that time that I realized that no matter what happened to me, I could always count on this face to erase all the pain of the emotions I couldn't ever show to anyone.**_

_**Not even Eiri, nor Mika.**_

Tohma whispered to himself in a hoarse voice, "You could still smile like that for someone like me."

_**Always telling me not to worry.**_

The familiar wallpaper became imperceptible before his eyes.

**Owari.**

---

**Author's note:** To tell you the truth, I didn't know what to write, but I thought of Suguru in my head playing. And he was playing for Tohma. All I knew from this mental picture was that I wanted something soft yet with strong, subtle details that told just enough but didn't give the whole picture.

Working on this for several days, and thinking about it in between work, I am quite proud of it now. Like lyrics, I want to be able to make a multi-layered song rather than just simple lyrics with just cliché thoughts.

Thank you for reading!

Sincerely,

Miyamoto Yui

2/19/2008 6:48:20 AM – LA

2/19/08 11:48 PM - Tokyo


End file.
